


let's start with your limitations

by suitablyskippy



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Amounts Of Vivisection, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Human Experimentation, Medical Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 04:05:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4333194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“As a species, you have to know what you can do. You have to know your potential! So I’m here to help you,” Pitou says. They bounce on their toes once, twice, before flinging out their hands in benevolent happiness. “I had so much to learn about humans! And I’ve learned it <i>all</i>.”</p><p>(The world is at peace, and Pitou has been invited to give a TED talk about their research interests.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	let's start with your limitations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whilst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whilst/gifts).



> [Originally written a few months ago as an exchange treat, but never actually posted; resurrected a few days ago [ on tumblr](http://uzumakiwonderland.tumblr.com/post/123667065934/neferpitou-modern-au-medical-research), and now I'm finally posting to AO3. And please beware those tags!!! THIS IS PITOU, AFTER ALL.]

 

The speaker steps neatly into the spotlight. 

They fold their hands at their back, looking about at the empty stage and the glinting eyes of cameras and the hushed, endless darkness of the filled auditorium. The spotlight is very bright, and their eyes are very, very large, but they aren’t blinking. 

“You will call me Neferpitou,” says Pitou. 

Laughter breaks the expectant silence – because who _doesn’t_ know Pitou’s name? After the Insectoid Integration Act passed, what human left alive in the whole of the world doesn’t know their name? – and Pitou’s bright smile grows brighter still, bouncing on their heels a little. 

But then that laughter breaks too, into something suddenly doubtful, more awkward – because that very bright smile hasn’t shifted, and isn’t that – across the world, a swell of unease is passing through all those hundreds of thousands of humans sitting at their personal computers, tuning into the livestream – because isn’t that the exact line with which Pitou first introduced themselves to the human world? 

And what human left alive doesn’t remember how _that_ had happened – the way that all normal programming had been interrupted? The way that the emergency broadcast had seemed, once its camera angle stabilised, to be coming from inside the blood-soaked mouth of a cave? – with dirt for walls, and smears of viscera for decorative colour? 

What human could ever, ever forget?

 

+++

 

(The camera angle had lurched once again after that. Something pale occupied the whole of the screen, and then moved backwards. 

“Meow,” said the pale something, and it had batted the side of the camera. A mouthful of endless tiny teeth like fragments of shattered bone, eyes the blank and violent red of headlights, pricked ears twitching in curious examination of the camera lens itself. Whatever it was, the pale something looked close enough to human to make it all the more horrifying where its inhumanity began. “Is it working now?” 

From offscreen, there had come a wheezing response. The creature sprang to its feet and left the shot for a moment. A crunch – something wet, the squelching sound of movement, a small damp sound like the sound of one’s tongue inside one’s own mouth – a man’s voice mumbling, low and indecipherable – and the creature returned to its place before the camera. Its bright smile was unchanged; fresh blood had spattered across that white dandelion-cloud of hair. 

“You will call me Neferpitou,” it had said. “My King has learned of democracy, and wishes to run one.”

Invariably this next brief moment was cut from repeat broadcasts, but, in that first live airing, behind Pitou had rolled quite clearly the shucked-hollow skull of the TV station’s cameraman. 

“Humans will submit to us. Humans who do not submit to us will be eaten, because disagreement has no place in a peaceful world!”

Very sweet, very sing-song. Their tail whipped back and forth behind them, though at the time of the original broadcast there had been no way for the audience to tell just what it was: that white metronomic ticking. 

“My King is playing board games with a human, which is why I speak for him. You can see that _we’re_ already making an effort to integrate! And now,” Pitou had said, childishly delighted, “it’s your turn, humans.”)

 

+++

 

But that was then, and this is now: the flag of the TED Institute slung across the backdrop of the stage, and Pitou in the spotlight, neat and bright-eyed with their tail flicking in the alert, perpetual interest to which humanity has grown accustomed: at the King’s side in public appearances, speaking up occasionally in the King’s media interviews, rumours of their fascination with humankind spreading slowly. They’re talking already, and the hit counter on the online stream is rocketing sky-high, higher than the sky. 

“I am your apex predator. But we’re allies now! So I wanted to make humans better,” Pitou says, and the microphone catches the contented purr rolling up from the back of their throat. “ _Fair_ is when humans make everything the same. And my species is superior in every way, so it’s _fair_ to help yours.” 

On the projection screen suspended behind them, against the TED Institute backdrop, a video clip begins to load. Pitou gestures back at it. 

“I’ll show you what inspired me!”

 

+++

 

_Retrieved from Youtube:_

“—tou! Pitou! It’s Azolka Yngradxl, from Channel 3, is there even the _slightest_ chance we could—” 

The exchange is unclear, swallowed up by the ruckus of the crowds around them. A human woman, microphone in hand, has turned from the camera to call frantically across the crowds; after a moment, Pitou is seen approaching the camera. Their bubble of personal space moves with them through the swarm of humans, maintained by the flicking of their tail. 

The question is called out above the noise. “Pitou! What’s the inspiration behind your trademark look?”

Pitou says, “I was born this way.”

The human woman clutches her microphone tighter; she whirls bright-eyed towards her camera. “Inspirational! Direct from Neferpitou themselves! Coming _directly_ , these _inspirational_ words—”

“I ripped apart the membrane of my birthing egg and came into the world this way,” Pitou clarifies. “Ah, except I had a scarf back then. And I was dripping with the mucus of my birth. Perhaps I should get a scarf again,” they say, and their headlight eyes grow wider in what is, presumably, thought. 

The human woman speaks with someone off camera; the audio track is poor quality, and her words aren’t distinct until she next addresses Pitou. “And if I ask what you’ll be wearing to the next Monarchical Gala...?”

“I’ll change my clothes if you change your skin,” says Pitou, and after a moment there’s laughter around them. The playfulness in their voice turns to thoughtfulness; they cock their head, looking the interviewer up and down. “Can humans do that? Replace your skin? Do you think it could be done, perhaps?”

The _per_ of _perhaps_ is rolled; the syllable is gutturally feline. The interviewer laughs, delighted. “ _Purr_ haps! Ah, that’s Pitou! That’s the Pitou we know! _Purr_ haps—”

The clip ends here. 

 

+++

 

Pitou’s spotlight seems all the brighter once the glow of the projection screen cuts out again. 

“As a species, you have to know what you can do. You have to know your potential! So I’m here to help you,” Pitou says. They bounce on their toes once, twice, before flinging out their hands in benevolent happiness. “I had so much to learn about humans! And I’ve learned it _all_.”

A blank slide comes up on the projection screen. “I started out with your limitations,” Pitou begins. “Humans are slower. Humans are weaker. Humans can be killed by _lots_ of things! – like blood loss,” they say, and glance back at the projection screen. 

A new slide flicks on: bare skin, exposed meat, and blood, blood, _blood_ , pooled on the surgical table and puddled on the clean tiles beneath and smeared across the corpse, sprayed across the walls. 

“—or heat,” Pitou continues, and the next slide is up before the shock of the first has hit: a glimpse of black, of something charred, of a figure that could have been human once, “—or water, or electricity, or peeling off all their skin, or breathing different types of gas, or not breathing _any_ gas—”

Slide after slide after slide: purpled skin, raw flesh, blood and bone and bloating, dozens upon dozens of human corpses in the same neat and sterile medical room. 

“—and _so_ many more! I’ll be publishing a paper,” says Pitou, taking careful pride in the human phrase, “with the fuller results of my research, if you’d like to read it. It passed all ethics controls – all my studies were carried out on volunteer subjects. I brought humans to my King, my King told them to volunteer for me, and they did.”

The respectful hush of the auditorium has changed. Somewhere out there in the darkness, someone is sobbing. 

“And if they didn’t volunteer,” Pitou says, “then my King sentenced them to death and gave them to me anyway. Human science is _founded_ on ethical research!”

 


End file.
